The remnants of the Mississauga gas plant are yet to be completely cleared away, but the political loyalty bought with its destruction seemed to hold Thursday night.

As per early results, all five ridings surrounding the sites of would-be generating stations in Mississauga and Oakville—the focal points of the Ontario Gas Plant Scandal—had been confirmed as Liberal safe seats.

In Oakville, Mississauga South, Mississauga East–Cooksville and Etobicoke Centre, Liberal candidates all scored roughly 50% of the vote, leading their Progressive Conservative opponents by margins of at least 15%.

Even in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, where Progressive Conservative Doug Holyday won a by-election last year, the riding swung back to the Liberals by night’s end.

Mr. Holyday, a former Etobicoke mayor and Toronto city councilor, may have been undone both by his party’s flagging fortunes, and his close association with fellow Etobicoke residents Rob and Doug Ford.

The abrupt cancellation of both plants, which opposition parties allege was done to preserve narrow Liberal leads in the GTA during the 2011 election, is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

While the scandal has seemed to dog the Liberals for the past three year—and was a likely contributor to the resignation of former premier Dalton McGuinty—it ultimately did nothing to prevent the Liberals from scoring a majority victory on Thursday night.

In 2010, the Liberals cancelled the proposed Oakville Generating Station after concerted opposition from the city’s “Citizens for Clean Air coalition.”

One year later, in the midst of the 2011 campaign, Mississauga South candidate Charles Sousa, announced cancellation of the Mississauga plant, which was already 30% complete. Construction would continue for another two months.

Related

Although the Liberals claimed the cancellations would cost about $200 million, last October Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk out the figure at between $950 million and $1.1 billion.

At the Ontario leader’s debate, NDP Andrea Horwath took the lead in criticizing the gas plants, prompting an apology from Premier Kathleen Wynne.

“The decisions around the relocation of the gas plants were wrong,” she said. “There was public money that was wasted, and in the process the public good was sacrificed to partisan interests.”

On Thursday night, members of the Tory camp were already starting to suspect that their campaign might have been hurt by leader Tim Hudak’s reluctance to sufficiently press the gas plants issue during the election cycle.

An exception came last Saturday, when Mr. Hudak visited the site of the Mississauga plant, which is still being cleared by bulldozers. Flanked by a pallets stacked with $1 billion in fake money, he said that Thursday’s election would be a “referendum on corruption.”